"disruptive innovation" entries

Recent initiatives designed to make U.S. consumer financial products simpler and intelligible to customers, reminds me of a study we did on Mobile Banks in the developing world. Designed to work on the simplest mobile devices and originally targeting the unbanked, mobile banks evolved from simple services to become widely used money-transfer and mobile payment systems. While it’s technically easy to roll out a rudimentary mobile payment system, the most successful mobile banks in the developing world use complex software systems that handle more (near) real-time transactions than traditional banking systems.